Virginia Tech women’s basketball is fresh off of three straight ACC wins, all of which included a fourth-quarter comeback.
Can add today to the list. #Hokies trailed Wake Forest by 1 entering Q4. Outscored Demon Deacons 16-8 to end the game.
Virginia Tech outscored those opponents a combined 108-57 (+51) over the remainder of those contests. https://t.co/9TNlZZ6ih6— David Cunningham (@therealdcunna) January 12, 2025
Hokies head coach Megan Duffy has done a masterful job in fourth quarters this season, but after a deep dive into her seven-plus years in that role, it’s obvious that this isn’t a one-time blip.
While Tech fans remember and cherish the tremendous success the program had under Kenny Brooks, some might also recall games that slipped away in the fourth quarter. After the Hokies came from behind to defeat Miami last Sunday, I decided to crunch the late-game numbers and compare the two head coaches, and after Virginia Tech rattled off two more come-from-behind victories last week at Georgia Tech and vs. Wake Forest, I had never felt more vindicated.
Let’s take a look at the numbers and how Megan Duffy stacks up against Kenny Brooks.
To lay the foundation, we need to understand the time frame snapshots. I ignored all of Brooks’ seasons at James Madison and only pulled the data from his time at Virginia Tech and his first half of this year at Kentucky. Brooks was hired at Tech ahead of the 2016-17 season while Duffy’s first season at Miami (OH) was 2017-18. This means the data window that we are looking at includes an extra season for Brooks.
Brooks has the nod in accolades and overall success in this time frame, but the purpose of this article is to compare how well the two coaches finish basketball games, and folks, Duffy is good.
The first statistic to compare is the total number of fourth-quarter come-from-behind victories. A win is counted only if the coaches were trailing entering the fourth quarter. Note that it does not count if a team was tied at the start of the final period or if it just trailed at one point in the final period.
Throughout his time at Tech and in his first season at Kentucky, Brooks has 16 total fourth-quarter comeback victories, which averages out to 1.78 per season. Meanwhile, Duffy has erased a fourth-quarter deficit 21 times (in one fewer season). That averages out to 2.63 per season, which is 0.85 more per season.
Of course, the key variable to a come-from-behind win is that you must be trailing entering the fourth quarter. That’s a position Brooks hasn’t really been in over the last four seasons because his teams have been very good. Kentucky has only trailed twice entering the fourth quarter this season, whereas Virginia Tech has trailed eight times.
That’s a testament to what Brooks built at Tech and what he has going on at Kentucky — like the last two Hokies teams, the Wildcats have dominated their competition so far this season. At the same time, the numbers show that Duffy didn’t quite reach that upper echelon at Marquette and is still working towards it in Blacksburg, because as fun and exciting as fourth-quarter comebacks are, it also means you were trailing after 75 percent of the game.
Both coaches have tremendous wins on their résumés in which they trailed after three quarters of play. Let’s reminisce on some of those epic comebacks under Brooks and get caught up on Duffy’s past.
We will list every comeback by the total deficit that was overcome. I have also included the average third-quarter point deficit for each coach. The tables are sorted by the margin entering the final period.
Kenny Brooks:
Megan Duffy:
Nothing really jumps off of the page when comparing these two tables. Both coaches, in their comebacks, average almost identical point deficits entering the fourth quarter. Duffy has the advantage in road comeback victories with nine, whereas Brooks holds the advantage in ranked comeback victories with five.
Now let’s flip it and take a gander at the opposite side, which is uglier: blown fourth-quarter leads. To count as a blown lead, the team must have led by one or more points entering the fourth quarter. This statistic is a little bit different because it’s all about maintaining a lead and playing from ahead instead of trying to make a charge from behind and complete a comeback.
Many fans vividly remember one or two games where a Brooks-led Virginia Tech team let a game slip away in the fourth, so much so that it became a pseudo-inside joke around town. But how many did he really allow to happen?
Since 2016-17, Brooks’ teams surrendered 13 games in which they held a lead entering the fourth quarter, which averages out to 1.44 per season. Doing the same exercise for Duffy, her teams blew nine leads in the fourth quarter, good for 1.13 per season. Again, a slight advantage to Duffy.
Once again, I will list every blown lead by each coach along with the average lead at the end of the third quarter. Each table will be sorted by the margin entering the final period:
Kenny Brooks:
Megan Duffy:
There are some infamous losses on Brooks’ list. If you look at his table, there were six games where his group led by eight-plus heading into the fourth quarter but squandered the win. They clearly played well enough for 30 minutes to have a large margin, yet they had a hard time closing out some games.
Meanwhile, Duffy’s largest lead blown was six points in an overtime loss to South Florida in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Her teams have done a good job of maintaining leads once they’re ahead, though they didn’t have as big of a cushion to defend. This stat is really evident when you look at the average lead after three quarters — 5.8 for Brooks and 3.3 for Duffy.
If we do simple math and subtract the blown leads from the come-from-behind victories:
Duffy: 21 comeback wins – 9 blown leads = 12
Brooks: 16 comeback wins – 13 blown leads = 3
It comes out to a bigger net positive for Duffy. Over the course of seven or eight seasons, that difference of nine games — between Duffy’s 12 and Brooks’ three — isn’t too drastic, but holding onto a lead entering the fourth quarter can mean the difference between going to the national championship game or going home.
Those two statistics were pretty straightforward, but each one of those games has many different variables that lead to a win or a loss. To better understand how good each coach is in the fourth quarter, we need to isolate the final period.
The first statistic is the fourth-quarter average point differential. This is just an average of the total difference in the fourth between one coach’s team and the opponent over an entire season. For example, Duffy was plus-11 on Sunday at Miami — a 24-13 difference. Duffy holds a career average of 2.2 points in the fourth quarter over her opponents while Brooks is right there at 2.1. They are nearly identical, but the table below shows the full story.
Duffy has had a positive fourth-quarter differential in each season and has remained steady with a range of 3.7 — as high as 4.4 to as low as 0.7. On the other side, Brooks has had some seasons where he laid the hammer down in the fourth (like the 3.7 average in 2017-18 and the 3.5 average in 2021-22), but he also had back-to-back seasons in which he averaged a negative differential (in 2019-20 and 2020-21). Brooks’ range is six, almost double Duffy’s.
(Note: I do not expect the high numbers for the current season to continue as both teams have only dipped their toes in conference play. Sixteen games is not a large sample size.)
To me, this final stat tells all. The fourth-quarter win percentage indicates how many fourth quarters you outscore your opponents. To get this number, I used this super intricate formula that you would only have found at NASA:
Fourth quarter win percentage = Fourth quarters won / Total games played
This isn’t rocket science. And yes, one of the games included is the 2021 NCAA Tournament game when Virginia Tech beat Marquette 70-63, though the Golden Eagles outscored the Hokies 24-22, which counted as a fourth-quarter “win” for Duffy.
This is the statistic that Duffy really earns her stripes in. Throughout her career, she has won 61.05% of fourth quarters. Since the 2016-17 season, Brooks has won 56.9% of his fourth quarters. Again, we must address the spreadsheet to better understand the entirety of this stat, particularly the year-by-year numbers:
As you can see, Duffy’s worst fourth-quarter win percentage was 56.5% (twice — in 17-18 and 23-24), which ranks very close to Brooks’ average. She has also never lost more than half of her fourth quarters in a season.
Once again, Brooks fluctuates drastically. His teams lost either half or less-than-half of their fourth quarters in three of the nine seasons, including an ugly 36 percent mark in the 2020-21 COVID year. This statistic incorporates every type of contest, from blowouts to close games, and in my opinion, it’s equally important to put away an opponent as it is to come from behind. Duffy proves across all metrics that she is good at both.
(Note: I don’t believe that Brooks’ 75% and Duffy’s 68.75% will stay as high throughout the course of the 2024-25 season. They’re only a few games into conference play and plenty can change.)
The point of this deep dive is not to degrade Kenny Brooks or “tarnish his legacy” at Virginia Tech. Brooks is a fantastic coach in his own right and is undoubtedly one of the best developers of talent in women’s college basketball, if not the best. That’s one of the many reasons why the SEC wanted him, and he’s having great success already. (Kentucky is 15-1 overall, 4-0 in the SEC and No. 12 in the AP Poll.)
Rather, the point of this was to show how great Megan Duffy has been in her career at finishing games. Tech fans know better than most fan bases how important holding onto a lead entering the fourth quarter can be. Heck, the Hokies would have at least one national championship across all sports, if not two, if they held onto their lead at the end of the third quarter.
Tech’s game at Georgia, where the Hokies outscored the Bulldogs 24-8 in the final frame, really opened the fans’ eyes at Duffy’s late-game success. It’s been on display three more times since: at Miami, at Georgia Tech and most recently vs. Wake Forest, and it’s not just a one-year thing; this is what she’s done her entire eight-year coaching career, so get used to it.
Whether it’s adjustments or the innate ability to fire her team up for the final frame, Duffy has the “it” factor in that department — which has already been on display in four fourth-quarter comebacks this year. She is, as I am deeming her, “The Closer.”